This is an incredible piece which can easily be viewed during a break (only 3-minutes long). It comes to Jedemi care of Maria Popova and her Brain Pickings site.
Quite simply, British philosopher and writer Alan Watts (1915-1973), author of the cult-classic The Way of Zen, provides us with a great ponderable:
What Would You Do If Money Were No Object?
Powerful, right?
Well check this out…
A Google search has led to a website (http://www.alanwatts.org), which has this to say about Mr. Watts:
Alan Watts was born in London in 1915, at the start of the first World War. At a young age he became fascinated with the Far East, and at fourteen he began to write and was published in the Journal of the London Buddhist Lodge before writing his first booklet on Zen in 1932. He moved to New York in 1938 and then to Chicago, where he served as an Episcopal priest for six years before leaving the Church. In 1950, he moved to upstate New York before going on to San Francisco to teach at the Academy of Asian Studies. Among Alan Watts’ earliest influences were the novelist Sax Rohmer and Zen scholars D.T. Suzuki and Christmas Humpreys. In late 1950, he visited with Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in NYC.
Notice who was listed in the last sentence? It all makes sense.
To learn more about Mr. Watts, you can also click here and here.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from “The Power of Myth”:
The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland.
Speak Your Mind